


best witness of thy truth sincere

by seventhstar



Series: a covenant with a bright blazing star [17]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Katsuki Yuuri, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Regency, M/M, Marriage of Convenience, Mutual Pining, Omega Victor Nikiforov, Poetry, Resolved Romantic Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 08:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16384346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: “He loves her.”Viktor frowns at him over the top of the book. They are only midway through the chapter, and Yuuri knows Viktor is loath to be interrupted in the midst of a reading, but he cannot help himself. He flexes his stiff fingers. He has still not managed to make any sparks of lightning, though he has managed to singe his own eyebrows and is grateful to have dark hair to hide the evidence.“Did you not insist that no one could love anyone without receiving a full accounting of their life story?”“I never insisted on anything of the kind,” Yuuri replies. “Did you not see it? He listened to her read.”[part of an ongoing series of fics, telling the story of poor and scandalous trademan's son viktor nikiforov's marriage of convenience to the reclusive lord katsuki]





	best witness of thy truth sincere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thehandsingsweapon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/gifts).



> happy birthday sim!

Yuuri’s first spell was learned at his mother’s knee.

Before he had tutors, before his father began to take him out into the fields to learn the spells all farmers needed, Yuuri had been a boy who sat beneath his mother’s chair while she worked. She had showed him how to hold the linens steady while she mended them, how to feed the fabrics through her deft fingers, inch by inch. Later, Yuuri would realize she was teaching him precision and control; he would realize she was teaching him to use magic to be useful, not just for the sake of it; she was teaching him that he ought to be above nothing.

“She used to sit here.” His mother’s favorite chair is still in the house, in the rear-facing parlor she favored. Her basket of mending is gone, though, and Yuuri suddenly wishes he had it. “She would have all the torn things in the house—shirts and sheets and pillowcases—she liked to be here while the light was good.”

Viktor runs his fingers over the back of the chair. _It is outdated,_ Yuuri thinks, _it must be._ The fabric is worn in all the places his mother sat.

“My mother had a psyche mirror.” Viktor tips his head back, eyes closed. “It was scandalous to own one, then. My father had to have it specially made. She kept it in her dressing room. I remember she used to fly into a fury if there was so much as a smudge on the glass.”

“It must have been an expensive mirror.”

“It was her most prized possession. Even when all her silks and jewels had been sold, she kept it. We had nowhere to go and nothing to dress for, but she would sit in her dressing room with me and…” Viktor touches his cheek. “I was only allowed to join her if I practiced my magic. She would sketch me things—suits of clothing and such—and test me to see how well I could recreate them.”

Yuuri swallows; he cannot think of a single complimentary thing to say about Viktor’s mother, whose sole ambition seems to have been to impress on Viktor an unhealthy obsession with his own face. (He sets aside, for the moment, the implication of some financial difficulty in Viktor’s life.) He is not even sure why. Surely she must have known that he was stunning already, and surely her idea of him ought to be improved by maternal affection _. She ought to have not cared if you_ were _ugly,_ Yuuri thinks but does not say. Viktor looks too wistful; _he_ would not criticize Yuuri’s mother for not instilling in Yuuri an alpha-like arrogance.

“Your mother must have been a talented mage.”

“She would have excessively disliked being told so.” Viktor taps his lip with a fingertip. “You learned magic in this chair, Yuuri?”

“I did.”

“Then perhaps you will sit down and I will teach you how to craft lightning.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

“Why should I mind?”

“Because the knowledge could make you very rich and perhaps you do not wish to share it?”

“The knowledge can hardly make me rich without a mage’s license, which I have no hope of obtaining. It might make you rich, and as we are currently joined, it would be to my benefit, would it not?”

“I could buy you many more shirts,” Yuuri agrees.

Yuuri’s experience has generally been that no flammable magic should be practiced indoors by a novice. In his haste, he forgets this entirely. He sits down eagerly in the chair and gestures sharply to drag a second over for Viktor; he is overenthusiastic, and the chair runs into Viktor’s legs so that he falls into it. Viktor looks faintly amused but refrains from mocking him.

“The first thing I learned to do was make sparks,” Viktor says. He holds out his cupped hands; a cloud of bright blue-white sparks appear. Rather than fade away, they remain cradled in Viktor’s palms, like a dandelion half-blown. Yuuri tries to parse the spellwork; it’s deceptively simple, and yet it clearly requires a highly advanced technique.

Yuuri mimics Viktor, his own hands outstretched so that his and Viktor’s fingertips nearly touch. He tries to create the same sparks Viktor has, but though he fumbles for the shape of the spell, all he manages is a burst of orange-red sparks and a sudden regret that they are conducting this lesson in a room full of wood furniture.

“No, no. Like this.” The sparks in Viktor’s hands multiply.

Yuuri tries again; this time, a spiral of flame flickers into existence above his palms before burning away. He sighs.

“Hmm,” Viktor says. “You are struggling.”

“How long did it take you?” Yuuri asks. He manages more fire, blue-white this time instead of orange.

“I started spontaneously making sparks when I was five or six,” Viktor says cheerfully. “You are not doing it correctly at all. Here. Give me your hands.”

“You— _five?”_ Yuuri imagines a small, apple-cheeked child with windblown silver hair, throwing off sparks as he pouts.

“It is really very simple.”

“Just because you are a genius,” Yuuri grumbles. He gives Viktor his hands, though, resting his cupped palms atop Viktor’s own.

Viktor blushes profusely, but at least he does not deny it. Yuuri half-expects him to say that his mother would not have approved of him having a functioning mind.

“Like so,” Viktor says softly. Yuuri feels the magic pass through Viktor’s hands and then through his, and the same fine mist of lightning appears. He closes his eyes; he can feel the intense energy of the sparks. The amount of magic Viktor is expending is not great, but he is casting not one spell but three, all at once, all in perfect concert. “Can you hold it?”

Yuuri tries, letting his power follow the paths Viktor’s is taking, covering Viktor’s spells the way his hands cover Viktor’s hands. He feels it; for a moment, the lightning is his.

Then Viktor lets go, and the sparks dissolve, winking out one by one as Yuuri struggles to keep them.

“Again?”

“Oh, yes,” Yuuri says. He and Viktor both lean forward at once, so close their heads nearly touch; Yuuri withdraws a little, embarrassed, but leaves his hands where they are. The phantom heat of Viktor’s power is still lingering on his skin. The lightning has lifted Viktor’s hair, fine strands escaping the pins, giving him the look of a lion in a windstorm. It is endearing.

Viktor steadies Yuuri’s hands, his thumbs against Yuuri’s palms, and magic flows between them like lightning does from heaven to earth. Yuuri closes his eyes once more and tries to once more to capture it.

* * *

_“You look exquisite today, Miss Glastonbury,” the Duke said as the waltz began to play._

_Gertrude shivered. The waltz had always been to her a most scandalous thing, and if her father had been here, he would have swooned. And the Duke, powerful and strong, his hand warm on her waist, did not increase her comfort. She was acutely aware that they were so close that a step forward would put her in his arms. The worst thing about the Duke, Gertrude reflected, was his smile. When he smiled at her, and displayed the dimple on the right side of his mouth, she quite forgot everything: her plan to destroy him, her flirtatious persona, breathing._

_“So you always say,” she said archly. “Do I have no other qualities of note, other than my face and figure?”_

_“You complained at length when I saw you last that I was too effusive with my praise! Now you demand I vary it?”_

_“It is not being praised that I am against. You would not like it if you were only a pretty face, and all your thoughts, all your skills, all your hardwon accomplishments went ignored. Are we not the same?”_

_“You read very well.”_

_“I--read?”_

_“I overheard you, in the library. You were reading Macbeth. You leant the words such feeling, such import. I have never cared for Shakespeare, you know, but you made it come alive for me.”_

_To this, Gertrude had no answer. She had displayed for the Duke her singing, which was fair, and her skill at the harp, which was passable, and of course he had seen her dance. But for him to speak of her reading aloud, which Gertrude never did in company because she felt it exposed her, was too much._

_“Tis ungentlemanly to eavesdrop,” she murmured._

_“Nor should Acteon have spied on Artemis,” he said, “but how could he help himself? She was a goddess, and he only a mortal man.”_

_“I am as mortal as you are.”_

_“All the better, then.”_

* * *

“He loves her.”

Viktor frowns at him over the top of the book. They are only midway through the chapter, and Yuuri knows Viktor is loath to be interrupted in the midst of a reading, but he cannot help himself. He flexes his stiff fingers. He has still not managed to make any sparks of lightning, though he has managed to singe his own eyebrows and is grateful to have dark hair to hide the evidence.

“Did you not insist that no one could love anyone without receiving a full accounting of their life story?”

“I never insisted on anything of the kind,” Yuuri replies. “Did you not see it? He listened to her read.”

“So?”

“He paid attention to what she read and how she read it. He made an effort to learn her preferences. He even changed the way he flirts with her now that he knows she is literary.”

“And Gertrude?” Viktor asks. “What have you surmised about her character?”

“I have no idea what she is about,” Yuuri admits. “She is inconsistent in her behavior in the extreme.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “Inconsistency is a very vexing thing.” There is something sardonic in his tone that makes Yuuri blush. “You are unsteady.”

“What?”

Viktor sets the book aside and reaches for his hands. “When you generate the sparks. You are too heavy-handed; the pressure of the spells is not consistent. Here. Try again.”

Yuuri does. Between the two of them sparks begin to fly again; when Viktor’s power fades, Yuuri manages a few more seconds before they fade away again.

+

_Ah! wherefore should my weeping maid suppress_  
_Those gentle signs of undissembled woe?_  
_When from soft love proceeds the deep distress,_  
_Ah, why forbid the willing tears to flow?_

_Since for my sake each dear translucent drop_  
_Breaks forth, best witness of thy truth sincere,_  
_My lips should drink the precious mixture up,_  
_And, ere it falls, receive the trembling tear._

_Trust me, these symptoms of thy faithful heart,_  
_In absence shall my dearest hope sustain;_  
_Delia! since such thy sorrow that we part,_  
_Such when we meet thy joy shall be again._

_Hard is that heart, and unsubdued by love,_  
_That feels no pain, nor ever heaves a sigh;_  
_Such hearts the fiercest passions only prove,_  
_Or freeze in cold insensibility._

_Oh! then indulge thy grief, nor fear to tell_  
_The gentle source from whence thy sorrows flow,_  
_Nor think it weakness when we love to feel,_  
_Nor think it weakness what we feel to show._

+

“Viktor. Viktor.”

Viktor rolls over in bed. Makkachin stirs, snuffling weakly; she is curled in Viktor’s arms. Yuuri rather envies her.

“What is it?”

In the dawn light, Viktor’s hair is tinted gold; Yuuri has drawn the curtains, both to enjoy the sunrise and to wake Viktor up. Viktor sweeps back his fringe, presses the heel of his hand over his eyes, props himself up on one elbow. He looks sleepily at Yuuri, who is seated in bed beside him.

“I want to read you something.”

“Now?”

“Yes, it is very important.”

“Has Gertrude murdered the Duke after all?”

“No, no. It is a poem.”

“Very well.” Viktor lies back down, but he turns to look at Yuuri. His hand on the sheets is close to Yuuri’s thigh; an inch more and they would touch.

Under the full force of his gaze, Yuuri shivers; he begins to read from the open book in his lap. He does his best to imbue it with feeling, though Yuuri has never thought of himself as a skilled reader and prior to his marriage, most of his recitations of literature have occurred after several drinks and the cessation of all dignity. Every line of this poem is dear to Yuuri; as of late, it has resonated with him in a way it never did before.

“…nor think it weakness what we feel to show.”

As the last line leaves his lips, Yuuri looks at Viktor, who is still watching him very intently. His nightshirt is not tied shut securely; Yuuri tries and fails not to look at the slice of pale chest visible there. He awaits a response, same sign of Viktor’s approval or disapproval, but none comes. Viktor is merely looking at him, pupils wide in the pale morning sun.

Yuuri cannot bear to be the object of such mysterious scrutiny. “Well, that is all,” he says, and he throws the book onto the bed. Makkachin follows him as he walks to the wardrobe, opens it, and peers into it, pretending an interest in the contents that is entirely feigned. He stares at the pile of clean linens, neatly folded, and wonders if he could conceivably close himself inside it and wait for death to relieve him of his humiliation. He cups his hands together in front of him instead and tries feebly to produce a little lightning. He has been trying every free moment since Viktor first taught him. He produces nothing.

“Yuuri.”

“Yes?”

Viktor has picked up the discarded volume and is studying it. “Is this Cowper?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “Otherwise I could have read you the poem at any time. Cowper I could only foist upon you while you were disoriented.” In truth, Yuuri had slept poorly; he had turned to his newest volume of Cowper for respite when sleep ceased to come; and lying there with love poems on his mind, looking at Viktor asleep beside him, his courage had risen.

“You know I despise Cowper.”

“You despise all the Cowper you have heard,” Yuuri says. “But I thought you would like this one. It is like all the poems you liked before. The ones that did not make you want to expire.”

“Mm.”

Viktor is studying the book with great interest. Satisfied that Viktor is not angry, Yuuri sits down, daringly, on the edge of the bed beside him, so close the mattress beneath him is warm from where Viktor lay. Viktor is reading the poem again, Yuuri sees. His brow is furrowed; that does not bode well. Yuuri prepares for a blistering critique, despite himself, he almost welcomes it. At least it will be the truth.

“You never answered my question, Yuuri.”

“What?”

Viktor gestures for him to come closer. The distance between them grows smaller, and smaller, and smaller; Viktor catches Yuuri by the neck of his shirt and draws him in the last few inches.

His mouth presses gently over Yuuri’s own, and all the sparks of lightning in the world seem to come to being in Yuuri’s chest. Time seems to move slow as molasses, Viktor’s scent lingering as a loose strand of his hair brushes Yuuri’s face.

“Have you ever fallen in love?”

Yuuri touches Viktor’s blushing cheek and leans in. _Only with you._

**Author's Note:**

> i have the next 3-4 chapters planned, but i still have 4 zine pieces left + WIPs that haven't been updated in centuries, so it'll probably be a while before this updates again :) thank you for reading!
> 
> EDIT: i haven't always written chronologically, so there's a lot of missing stuff between part 17 (this one) and the end! i see a lot of people confused about this in the comments, so for the record: eventually, you will know everything! things will likely start to be out of order again now that i've figured out what i'm doing.


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